Industrial plants dealing with mining, production or storage of explosive or flammable gases and vapors such as hydrocarbons (methane, ethane, etc.), fuels of different kinds, hydrogen, acetylene, etc. are in constant danger of accidents. Explosions may cause fires, thus there is inherent danger from both the explosion itself and from the consequent ensuing fires. In addition, fires may result from a plethora of diverse causes, and when occurring in such plants, such fires may themselves cause explosions. The dangers are to both personnel and equipment, and the resulting damages may be in the worst cases loss of human lives and large financial losses to the owners of the plants.
Additionally, the release of the gases in question has a negative impact on the environment. As a result, regulatory laws have been introduced around the world to impose monitoring standards and heavy fines to companies that do not show due diligence in early detection of fires and prevention of inordinate releases of such materials.
The likelihood of explosions increases, up to a point, with increasing gas concentrations. Accordingly, over the past decades a large number of gas concentration measuring devices and fire detection instrumentation has been developed and used in mining, production and storage plants. Until recently only local detectors (for gases) or non-imaging IR and UV detectors (for flames) have been deployed. A gas detector of this type can easily miss the target gas if the gas cloud is present but does not physically meet the position of the detector (or path in case of cloud movement). This is due to the use of contact methods, such as chemical reactions with the gas. In the case of fire detection, the monitor is based on a single detector which does not provide an image of the field (i.e., scene) being monitored. Therefore the monitor cannot provide the necessary information on the location and size of the fire.
Current industry instrumentation does not allow for the detection, identification, and location of the concentration, size and prognosis information of explosive gas or vapor clouds and flames due to incipient fires. Accordingly, current instrumentation cannot meet the additional requirements of being operable from a distance, in harsh environments, usually outdoors, and with minimal false alarms due to signals from other possible infrared sources, such as sun reflections, welding arcs, halogen lamps etc. The alarms provided by such detection instruments may be effectively used by the plant operators to prevent damages and losses of human lives through a number of possible actions. An example of such actions may be partial or total plant shut down, the request of fire department involvement, or other preventive or corrective action.